This is my yappy place. Sometimes I share my workshop experiences in jewelry-making; sometimes I talk about other things that interest me. I have created tabs along the top of my blog (next to the word home, below this msg) so you can select certain categories if you like.

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Friday, March 16, 2012

Paypal now has a card reader… competition for square? And where’d my ebay sellers go?

WHERE’D MY EBAY SELLERS GO?

Today I was looking at my list of favorite eBay sellers (eBay keeps a nice little list for you called “Saved Sellers” whenever you mark a seller as someone you want to… save).

I have 47 on my list. According to eBay, 32 of the 47 state: “This seller currently has 0 items for sale.”

68% of my favorite eBay sellers no longer sell on eBay.

I suppose some of them have gone on to more profitable online venues, while others have just decided to stop doing whatever they were doing (lampworking, making jewelry, selling supplies… most of my favorite’d sellers were lampworkers).

eBay’s fees ARE significantly higher than Etsy, Artfire, IndiePublic, etc. That’s too bad for us (jewelry and bead makers). We were, however, a mere drop in the bucket to eBay so losing us in order to gain many (MANY!) more dollars was a no-brainer.

And yet, I can’t give it up. Although I make the majority of my sales through my own website (thank goodness), I still sell significantly more on eBay than I do on Etsy. I don’t advertise either one, so I don’t know what the deal is.

Now I’m going to go look up all these old eBay sellers and see if I can find out where they’ve gone. I only mark a seller as “favorite” if I REALLY liked their stuff.

PAYPAL NOW HAS A CARD READER… COMPETITION FOR SQUARE?

First off, if you’re not familiar with Square (or Square-Up), it’s a small device that you can plug into your smart phone so that you can swipe people’s credit cards during shows. You can also use the service to enter the data online, but the real attraction is what’s called “the cube” (the phone attachment).

The article states: PayPal has launched an iPhone-friendly credit card reader and plans to enter into direct competition with the well-established Square ecosystem.

Well, right off the bat, that discounts me. I have a Droid, not an iPhone. But it’s an interesting article and if you do shows and have a smart phone, it’s definitely worth looking into either one of these devices.

Updated to add that a friend notified me that it IS compatible with Droid.

NEW LISTINGS

Although I’ve been working on some rather labor-intensive projects lately, I have managed to get a few other things listed (click a photo for more info):

“Believe nothing. No matter where you read it, or who said it, even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own inner reason and your own common sense.” -- Buddha

3 comments:

I thought your information on the Ebay favorites was interesting so I went and counted mine. Only 50% of mine were gone. WOW! That is totally interesting. I do know that some are on Etsy but not all of them. Because I've not been making purchases lately I guess it would have continued to be unknown to me. So thanks for the info! I do enjoy looking at your creations a lot. Hope you're looking forward to a great weekend.

PayPal Here sounds quite interesting. I've been using Square, but in this area it's not very well-known. The PayPal name is widely recognized and might be more encouraging for some people. Oh, and it is for droids too! I check the PayPal site and found that, otherwise I'd be out of luck. I just might give this a try. I signed up to be notified when they are available here: www.paypal.com/here